


We'll Be Okay, Kid

by Spellmugwump



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adopted Children, Adoption, Alternate Universe, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Cameo, Crossover, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Geniuses, Hogwarts, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Iron Man 1, Iron Man 2, Long Lost Brothers, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Protective Harry, Protective Tony, Protective Tony Stark, Protectiveness, Siblings, Technology, War, Wizarding World, harry potter and tony stark are brothers, how do tags work, if at all, wizarding war
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spellmugwump/pseuds/Spellmugwump
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark has a little brother, who just so happens to be the Boy-Who-Lived. Pity he had to find out by looking through his parents' stuff after they died. Tony's only eighteen, and he could do without a brother to raise... especially one with magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Attics Aren't The Best Places

 

Tony knew he should have been more upset when his parents died.

  
Maybe there was something wrong with him - it wouldn’t be too far off considering lots of people with his level of genius went completely insane - but maybe it was simply because Howard and Maria had become little more than acquaintances that shared the same hollow, expansive space that was Tony’s childhood home.

  
Most people would find it sad, that Tony couldn’t even force a few tears at his own parents’ funeral, but he simply found it expected, if a little annoying considering those that noticed were likely to kick up a fuss - namely, the media and their preying, hawk-like eyes.

  
Drawing his mind away from the lack of salty liquid in his own eyes, Tony felt a little bad that his thoughts had taken the track of not caring about the people who had, like it or not, brought him into the world. Of course he was upset, they were his parents for God’s sake; they had cared for him a little bit at least, through the haze of alcohol and absences - Howard on his escapades to somewhere cold that Tony didn’t bother to remember, Maria off to Italy as soon as Tony could walk to go and relive the old times with her family and friends.

  
They were probably both having affairs, Tony thought wryly.

  
Either way - there might be a little bit of truth in the speech that he had been asked to give in the service. Just a little.

  
Hidden under the shadow of an overly large umbrella, Tony left the church with Obie by his side, glad that he had at least his father’s old friend by his side to guide him against the harsh rain and glaring camera flashes.

  
It was so unbelievably stereotypical that Tony actually snorted - Obie put it down to grief.

  
And now, here he was sat in an old, musty attic four months later, being forced to root through the remnants of his parent’s lives. Joy.  
There was endless blueprints and plans and sheets upon sheets of decades old paper, for things like weaponry and model cities as well as chunks of metal that looked like long abandoned prototypes.

  
It was a stark difference to the boxes that contained his mother’s things - designer dresses that were probably worth a fortune as well as stacks of books and paper and journals filled with them to the brim.

  
Coughing, Tony reached for and yanked a large cardboard box that he had not anticipated to be quite so heavy, assuming that it held clothes like its neighbours - and it fell to the floor, upending its contents onto the dusty floorboards.

  
Swearing, Tony went to kneel down before remembering that these were very expensive trousers - even by his standards.

  
He awkwardly squatted instead.

  
Mounds of old envelopes and paperwork that looked at least a decade old were sprawled haphazardly on the floor - some of it even looked unopened, letters with openings still sealed shut.

  
Tony was only human, after all - he went for the biggest, most promising looking folder, that looked fit to bursting with some sort of secret from his parents’ past - he didn’t know which one, because suspiciously there was no label on the box.

  
It was unexpectedly heavy with hidden depths, and with a sharp surge of anticipation of which Tony didn’t know where it came from but had it all the same, strange enough due to the fact that he had been opening musty, crumbling old boxes for nearly two hours by now.

  
He read the typed, nondescript font quickly, eyes glancing over the words but not really taking them in before he read them for a second time - partially because it was in Italian. Thankfully, sitting with a stuffy old Italian tutor every Thursday evening was the only request of Maria concerning Tony’s education - she was determined to make sure Tony could communicate with his family at least a little bit. Howard didn’t seem to care, even though he himself was half Italian. Tony actually doubted that he spoke a word of the language.

  
At first, the words did not seem too dehabilitatingly shocking, but with a further read of the document due to nothing more than pure curiosity and boredom, the shock set in.

  
A birth certificate.

  
Tony expected that the certificate-document-thing would be signifying the birth of himself, or his parents - but no. The name printed on the thin paper was not Anthony, Howard or Maria, but instead a rather mundane “Harry”.

  
Harry?

  
There was no reason for the birth certificate of some obscure, nondescript child to be within the hidden confines of his parents’ lives - but it was not this that had caused Tony’s shock.

  
It was the papers that had long ago become unattached to the birth certificate that shocked him.

  
Adoption papers.

  
There was a fair few, all showing different sections and stages, all now littered upon the creaking floor with the remains of their staples that had been binding them together before Tony has disturbed them. There was a sudden sense of urgency that overtook and absorbed Tony, a bubble of frantic scrambling to find that it wasn’t true, that Tony’s quick thinking had failed him and that he really shouldn’t have had that one dodgy looking shot last night instead of the terrifying, astounding reality that slowly lodged itself into Tony’s stomach, echoing into his mind that it was true.

  
Rocking back on his heels, eventually falling back far enough to near enough topple into a sitting position upon the floor, Tony’s mind reeled further than his body just had.

  
He didn’t quite know what he should do.

  
What seemed like hundreds of emotions welled up inside of him, twisting his thought patterns into mangled corpses and he tried to move through the fog to think about the logical path forward, a testament to his many years of developing and inventing and designing.

  
Then, as it always did, the anger slithered from the depths of somewhere deep within Tony and eclipsed all other feeling. Anger and his parents, anger at the adoptive parents, anger at those who kept it quiet and anger at himself for not catching on sooner, for not being there.

  
And then the big question - why had his parents given his brother up for adoption?

  
He couldn’t find it within himself to doubt the fact that he had a brother. Apparently, he was eight now. Little. Most definitely still a child. And, though Tony would never, ever admit it out loud and could barely bring himself to admit it internally to himself - so was he. He had only just turned eighteen, for God’s sake.

  
Something else was crawling its way into his system though, something both scary and exciting at the same time - the need to find Harry.  
Tony had recently lost his family. He didn’t get along with them too well when they were alive, and they certainly were not in his good books at the moment, but the thought of being the only one in the world, alone in the solitude of being left behind by the people that brought you into the world, was terrifying. He was the last one.

  
Apparently not.

  
The very idea of having somebody who could possibly match his intelligence sent a swell of happiness soaring through him, the idea that he could look at another person and see aspects of himself in them again - however self-obsessed that was - felt … good.

  
He needed to find Harry.

  
He needed to tell somebody about this … someone who could help him find his little brother, as strange as the notion still seemed to him, even in his own head.

  
Rhodey.

  
Quick as ever, the phone had already selected the contact name affectionately labelled “Platypus” before Tony realised that he had been controlling it. It wasn’t long until Rhodey picked up, with an impatient sigh brought on from the collection of drunken calls and middle-of-the-night coffee induced conversations.

  
‘Rhodey.’

  
‘Tony, I swear to God, if this is about that damn toaster again -’

  
‘No - I - uh … can you please come over?’

  
There was a pregnant pause at the other end of the line, and Tony cursed his stuttering. Apparently, finding out about long lost family affected more than just your brain.

  
‘Did you break something important?’

  
Tony sighed. ‘No. No I did not - seriously, I didn’t. I just … found something out and could really do with someone else being here too right now.’ Realising what he had said, Tony hurriedly continued on. ‘I called everyone else but they’re all busy so I had to call you.’

  
‘Right,’ Rhodey said, sounding unconvinced but not mentioning anything about it. Bless him. Tony should make some kind of anonymous donation to his bank account. Rhodey sighed in such a long-suffering way that the figure in Tony’s mind doubled. ‘I’ll be over as soon as. Just give me half an hour to make something up to tell the -’

  
‘Okay thanks.’ Tony interrupted him swiftly, ignoring the protests and hanging up on his friend before he could get emotional in any way, shape, or form.

  
Tony rubbed his hand over his face, groaning as he threw the thin sheets of paper to the ground. It was only a few seconds later that he picked them back up again, staring through them unseeingly before deciding that he might as well look through the rest before Rhodey arrived.

  
Nonsensical codes and letter in both Italian and English were stamped across the pages, and Tony was really starting to wish that Rhodey would hurry the hell up, before a small and unassuming pair of Polaroid’s stapled together messily fell out of the wreath of wafer-thin paper, both crumpled and torn, dog eared at the edges.

  
One of them, the one on top, was a picture of a wrinkled and red-tinted looking baby, small tufts of black hair on it’s head and fists clenched tight even though it’s eyes were closed in what looked like sleep. Tony’s arm physically reeled back when he realised that this must be his little brother, definitely not long after birth, in the arms of their shared mother - if the expensive rings on her hands where any indication.

  
God knew what sort of person kept huge diamond rings on during child birth.

  
In a new light, Tony looked at the picture underneath the first, and was startled to see a young couple beaming into the camera. The man had a handsome face with messy black hair that reminded Tony of his own, with hazel eyes covered with glasses and a lanky looking physique. The woman was much smaller in stature that then man and held an almost elfin like quality about her, with long red hair and dancing green eyes, hands held gently in her lap as she laughed into the lense of the camera.

  
Flipping over the photograph, Tony saw the scrawl of someone’s writing that he did not recognise, labelling the picture “Potter”. There was no marking on the other photo, no indication that that one was of any real importance.

  
As if Rhodey had sensed Tony’s escalating anger, the door burst open with a resounding bang as Rhodey heaved himself past it and into the dust.

  
‘Jesus Tony,’ he said, coughing. ‘What the hell are you doing up here? I thought you’d gone and blown yourself up for God’s sake, warn a guy.’

  
Tony tried to grin, he really did, but the realisation that Rhodey was going to know about this and that he could maybe not keep a living, breathing human being a complete secret from everyone and everything hit him.

  
In his true style, he carried on with what he was doing anyway.

  
‘Look,’ he said, indicating to the papers that were, by now, scattered all around him. ‘Adoption papers. Wonderful. Brilliant. Aweso -’  
Rhodey made an unintelligible noise coming from the back of his throat, eyes wide and shining in the mild darkness, gawping at Tony owlishly.

  
‘You -’ he swallowed, ‘You’re adopted?’

  
Tony froze. And then he laughed.

  
He laughed so hard that he could barely breathe and so that Rhodey was looking as if he had just announced that he was going to marry the man’s mother.

  
‘Oh God no,’ Tony gasped, holding his side from the pain of so much laughter, not even sure why or how the hysteria had kicked in so quickly or so potently. ‘I … a brother, I have a little brother,’

  
‘Right,’ Rhodey said slowly, relieved, as he rubbed his forehead. Then he frowned. ‘Wait, what?’

  
‘Yeah.’

  
‘They just -’

  
‘Yeah.’

  
‘Without even -’

  
‘Right in one.’

  
‘Christ,’ Rhodey took a quick seat beside Tony on the dust infested floor. He looked at Tony with a sly glint in his eye that usually made Tony feel more than a little wary, considering how evil and vindictive Rhodey could be when he felt like it.

  
‘Well,’ he said decisively. ‘We’d better go and find him then.’

  
There was a beat of silence, and then they both erupted into uncontrollable laughter.

 


	2. Privet Drive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got my first job, had mock exams, got a new laptop and a close family friend died, but here I am, and dear God I hope you like it! I think it came out all right, but I struggled to draw it out, as always. I write things too quickly, not sure why.  
> Anyway - I really hope you like this first meeting. Cheers!

Fingers poised, the keyboard glared up at Tony with bright, well worn keys. He had chosen his favourite computer - not the height of technology by any means, but one of his first prototypes that he would never admit towards which he felt a little too much sentimental value. After all, JARVIS had been programmed on it.

The coding that had always come so naturally to Tony would not come. The ability - well, that was far from an issue, but the creativity and inspiration that usually flowed through his fingertips without him even noticing was stuck somewhere in his minefield of a mind. Flexing his finger muscles that had become stiff in his longer-than-he-thought respite from searching for Harry (which had never really begun, if Tony was honest with himself), a soft whirring was heard as Dummy meekly approached the chair.

‘Hey, Dummy,’ Tony said, sighing. He saw the thin piece of A4 clutched, crumpled, in the robot’s claw. ‘What’ve you got for me?’

There was a strange chirp, and the newly-built and affectionately named Dummy thrust the paper towards Tony violently, singular limb drifting up the ceiling in what looked like a sorrowful gesture.

Rolling his eyes in fondness, Tony turned to the sheet of paper. It was then that he realised that the paper held something to do with his brother - what else could it be? It was a strange sensation still, holding something that would tell him the identity of his brother. A small human who came from the same gene pool as him; it was terrifying and brilliant at the same time.

With hands that weren’t quite shaking yet, Tony uncrumpled the paper. There, in high quality colour ink that only billionaires would ever dream of buying - or their PA’s, anyway - was a photograph from the Surrey Comet of a small group of children in identical uniforms holding a banner between them. “School Children Go Green” read the headline, and underneath the picture was where Tony’s breath caught.

"Andrew Dixon, Sophie Jones, Edward Patten, Joseph Maxwell and Harry Potter, Year 1 of Little Whinging Church of England Primary School."

There was the proof, in solid and literal black and white. Harry Potter. The picture of the schoolchildren was blurry, but Tony only cared about the small one on the end with the too-big school sweater and a worried expression on his face. That was his brother - with the same dark hair and yet different eyes, the scrawny look that Tony had suffered up until the age of fourteen, but a completely different nose. Maybe this was what it was like to find out you had a long-lost kid, Tony realised with a sudden jolt.

Tony looked to the date - it made Harry five. He didn't think that people changed that much during the gap between the ages of five and eight, but he could be mistaken. He was certainly no child expert, after all. Nevertheless, Tony was taking this grainy picture as an accurate representation of what he is brother now looked like, and it took his breath away as the hard proof slammed into his face like a sledgehammer. He had no idea how Dummy had found this, but could only be appreciative of his work… maybe he’d give him some company after all, anything to avoid paperwork.

As a sudden idea took hold, Tony swept away designs and half-built prototypes for an AI system that he had been dabbling in to free up some space on his barely seen desk. Grabbing the case file from a precarious stack of disused paper plates and the screenshot of the article, he placed them heavily on the desk, a new inspiration taking hold of him as he did so.

‘The Potters…’ Tony said to himself, a smile coming onto his face as he came into his element.

*

The area was disgustingly perfect, not a single leaf out of line as the car cruised past the identical rows of pruned shrubbery and manicured hanging baskets. Tony couldn't help but admit that he was slightly disheartened by the dull surroundings, hoping to find at least something a little more exciting on Privet Drive than a particularly obscene flowery cardigan. He, who had come from the height of modern and futuristic interior design, couldn't help but feel for his brother - if Harry was anything like Tony, he would have found it hard to breathe, let alone live in a place like this. But, hopefully, his little brother's stay here wouldn't last too much longer.

The nervousness once again settled into Tony's mind like a thin shadow of doubt that was so very unlike his usual disposition. Would his brother even want to live with him? Tony certainly found suburbia stuffy and stifling, but there was really no saying that Harry would feel the same. He might like simplicity and anonymity, not fast cars and the flashing bulbs of fame. There was still a sliver of shame that Tony wished that Harry would want to leave his home of seven years, because surely that would indicate a less than stellar home life. But his own thoughts were the one thing that Tony couldn't fabricate or manipulate, and so the forbidden view remained - but it would certainly never leave his lips.

All too soon, the car slowed to a stop in front of the ominous Privet Drive. ‘Here you are boss,’ the new driver whose name Tony didn’t know said. He wished Rhodey could be here, however much he pretended that he was burdened by the man’s presence every time they came into contact with each other. He’d never tell him that though. Never. He wished Obie was here, too. He always seemed to know the right thing to do, something that Tony was severely lacking - not that Tony had even told Obadiah about any of this.

‘Thanks,’ Tony said simply, clapping the man on his large shoulder. A strange grunt came from him that Tony assumed was some form of reply. ‘Shouldn’t I come in with you boss?’ he said. 

Shrugging, Tony straightened his shoulders and steadied his hands. ‘Nah.’ He murmured, shaking out his arms, trying to imagine the tension leaving them in waves. He should bulk up a bit, they were skinny. Start lifting weights or whatever people did. He needed to set himself up for life, if he was lazy now at eighteen then how would he stay fit and good-looking at forty? He should invest in a gym - focus. Focus. Now was not the time to think about the possibilities of programming and exercising at the same time.

God. He was eighteen. Could he really look after a kid? He could barely look after himself… the legalities didn't worry him; it may not be the best way to go about it but if the worst came to the worst (or he was too lazy) Tony could always fake the documents. But this - this wasn’t about documents and legality, this was about his brother and family, about Tony looking after a kid that he didn’t know, and that was even if Harry wanted to come and stay with him.

It didn't matter if Harry decided leave or stay; once Tony had made the connection with him, there was no going back - neither of them would forget about one another and there would always be a lingering feeling of something if they tried. Once you know you have family out there, it’s hard not to imagine how they would react to things, how they would fit into your life… what emotional gap they would fill.

It scared Tony to pieces, but Tony Stark did not do things by halves.

Polished and gleaming, the bronze number four judged Tony just as much as the rest of the street did. He raised a slightly shaking hand, knocked twice just to the right of the four, and waited.

‘Hello?’ It was a sickly sweet voice that Tony immediately saw through having experienced many a fake woman in his life. He heard her voice before he saw her face, but could not honestly say that he was in any way shocked at Mrs. Dursley’s appearance. Her voice seemed to suit her looks - thin, pale and dressed in a rather startling shade of green, she was the picture of a nineteen-fifties housewife.

‘Mrs. Dursley?’ Tony questioned, even though he already knew the answer. He wanted to make a good impression; politeness seemed the way to go.

Petunia Dursley’s eyes widened as she took in Tony’s face, eyes running up and down his form and then glancing over his shoulder as she took in the car behind him. Squeaking, she whispered out a small excuse, and then closed the door again with a very audible bang and a shriek of ‘Vernon!’.

It wasn’t long before she returned, towing the round and blotchy Vernon Dursley who looked considerably chuffed to have Tony at his door. He seemed to look around behind Tony as if hoping that one of his neighbours was witnessing the event.

‘Please come in, Mr. Stark,’ Petunia said pleasantly, holding the door open for him and standing to the side, dragging her voluptuous husband with her. ‘Though I can’t imagine what would bring you to our doorstep!’ She cackled wildly in a way that hinted at hysteria.

‘Oh, just some private issues,’ Tony said charmingly, smiling with all of the angelic goodness he could muster. He was led into a living room that was decorated in floral patterns and pinks and greens, every corner bordered in some kind of frill.

‘Tea?’ Petunia offered, a tea set materialising on the polished wooden table between them. Tony declined with a small wave of his hand. Confronted with people like this, a fakeness that he was well used to despite what people may think about the so-called ignorance of youth.

‘What does bring you to us, Mr. Stark?’ Vernon Dursley said, leaning forward in anticipation. ‘Are you inquiring about a business deal, perhaps? Grunnings can provide your company with some of the finest equipment in Europe.’

Tony highly doubted that, but nevertheless grinned and waved away the notion of any kind of business deal. He didn’t even run the company for God’s sake. ‘I am looking for a kind of deal, but not a business one I’m afraid.’

The Dursley’s glanced at each other while their smiles drooped slightly.

‘It’s about your nephew.’

If there was anything that could ever change the mood of the room so quickly, Tony never would have guessed it would have been that phrase. And yet - the air thickened and the temperature dropped, but not as fast as the smiles that slid from the Dursley’s faces.

‘What do you want with - Harry,’ the name seemed difficult to even utter from the look of thinly veiled contempt on the hollow cheeked face of Petunia. She and her husband seemed to stiffen, both looking very uncomfortable. Tony thought they looked like only manners and a stiff upper lip were holding them together at that moment.

Struggling with a simple and easy explanation that would explain the situation in a nutshell, Tony then decided that he had no sympathy for these people and thought he might as well spit it all out.

‘There’s been some… revelations about Harry’s parents, recently. Adoption, in particular.’

A malicious smile found it’s way onto Petunia’s face as she revelled in whatever she was thinking. ‘You mean to say there was some kind infidelity?’ She looked far too happy at the thought of her sister having such a flawed marriage.

‘No.’ Tony said firmly. ‘Harry was adopted by your sister and her husband. His biological parents are mine. He’s my brother.’

The couple’s jaws fell open as they stared at him in shock. There was a few beats of silence and then - ‘Preposterous!’

‘Vernon!’ The man’s wife hissed, but he paid no mind - though he did lower his tone.

‘The boy is Potter’s son through and through, you only have to glance at him to see that - there must be some other motive -’

‘Believe me, Mr. Dursley,’ Tony said, his pleasant smile morphing into a grimace. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my brother. Certainly not to cheat you for an order of subpar drills.’

The puce colour of Vernon Dursley’s face really required some kind of medical attention in Tony’s opinion, and yet it was all the more amusing especially in comparison to his wife’s deathly pale pallor.

‘Now listen here!’ The man said, a sausage-like finger pointed at Tony in a way that Tony thought he was meant to be intimidated. ‘I don’t care who’s son you are, I will not have a teenager insult me in my own home!’

Well then.

‘I am a lot more than my father’s son.’ Tony said coldly, standing up and rising to eye level with Vernon. ‘And I am here to negotiate the guardianship, or something like it, of my brother. Are you willing to do that, or do I have to involve the considerable legal team of Stark Industries?’

Clutching her husband’s meaty forearm, Petunia rose and nodded hurriedly, glancing sideways at Mr. Dursley every few seconds as if scared of what he would say.  
‘No need for the law to get involved,’ Vernon said finally, gruffly planting himself back onto his sofa heavily. Grinning in triumph, Tony followed suit, but much less aggressively.

There was a beat of silence, until the quiet voice of Petunia Dursley spoke up. She looked both flustered and determined, a few strands of hair from her immaculate hairdo falling in her distress.

‘You can have the boy.’

Tony was mildly taken aback at the sudden conformation of his hopes. ‘What?’

‘Have him. We didn’t want him. We’re not obligated to keep him now - now that that man was mistaken.’

Blinking, Tony wondered just who this man was, and what part he had to play in the placing of Harry into this house. Who or what was to say that this man wouldn’t hunt down Tony to correct his mistake?

‘What man?’

‘I -’ Petunia looked shiftily around, as if she had said too much already. ‘He left the boy here. He left a letter too, saying that he had to be with blood relatives.’

‘As you can see, that doesn’t apply anymore,’ Vernon said. ‘So you can have him. We don’t have to spend my hard earned cash on him any longer.’

Ignoring the burning hot anger that curled up within him like a flame, Tony looked back to Petunia. ‘Can I see this letter?’

‘I got rid of it years ago,’ she said quickly, hands clasped in her lap tightly. Years later, Tony would swear she still had that incriminating bit of paper - of course, he would have no need for it then.

‘Burnt the damn thing,’ Vernon finished, placing a hand over his wife’s clenched ones, eclipsing them both from sight.

‘Right. Well then.’ Tony said, nodding slowly. Then, uncharacteristically reservedly, he spoke quietly. ‘Can I see him?’

Stuttering, both husband and wife smiled in a most definitely not heartfelt way, and rose to leave the room. Vernon muttered something about checking on Dudley and his new video game, whereas Petunia said that she was going to fetch Harry - of course, not in those exact words, however, how silly of Tony to assume that they would call their nephew with terms of endearment.

There was a shrill shout of ‘Boy!’, and then - the door opened hesitantly and the hinges creaked annoyingly but that was definitely not what Tony was concentrating on, for his heart was in his mouth and he was panicking quite a lot, oh Jesus Christ -

And there he was, Harry, being pushed into the room by his aunt.

He was thin, in a way that probably wasn’t healthy, with a mess of dark brown hair on his head that was oh-so-similar to Tony’s own when he didn’t style it. Harry had a paler skin tone than Tony, not by much but enough to establish that it was their father’s rather than their mother’s complexion that he had inherited. Just as in the picture, Harry had a more round, button nose than Tony’s own, but that could just be the age talking, now Tony saw him in the flesh. The eyes were the most different - Harry’s were a kind of dark, leafy green that stood out with his tone of skin, and though it had traces of the same brown as Tony’s, it was clear that the same eyes had been on their mother’s face. Higher cheekbones than Tony’s but darker lips; apart from these differences Harry looked the same as Tony had at his age. There really was no doubting they were brothers, and Tony couldn’t help but wonder why Vernon Dursley was so convinced that Harry looked identical to his adoptive father.

‘Hi,’ Harry said in his childish voice, music to Tony’s ears as he looked and heard and took in his brother for the first time.

‘Hi,’ Tony repeated, swallowing down the lump in his throat.

There was a beat of silence, and then - ‘Are you coming to take me away?’

Harry had moved closer to Tony, until he was standing opposite him, on the other side of the coffee table where the tea set was sitting, long forgotten.  
‘You know who I am?’ Tony rasped, feeling quite shocked at the events of the day as they finally caught up with him.

Harry shrugged loosely, looking vaguely uncomfortable - but not towards Tony, more at the fact that the door was left ajar behind him. He looked paranoid, always glancing behind him as if he expected something to lunge out at him. Tony felt a flicker of worry at his actions.

‘Aunt Petunia said you were my brother.’ He stated, staring at Tony hopefully. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

Gulping, Tony nodded.

‘I don’t mind that I’m adopted,’ Harry said absently, eyebrows creasing together in thought that was so painfully like Tony’s own expression it made him want to shout loudly at anything and everything. Tony was, too, taken aback by the fact that Harry had evidently deduced his adoption already. Pride weaved it’s way into his thoughts as Harry continued. ‘Well, it’s not your fault anyway. It’s nice that you came to see me though, all the way from America.’

Tony smiled softly, standing up slowly. ‘You can come back with me if you want. Not to be rude or anything but I don’t think your Aunt and Uncle are the nicest kind of people.’

‘Dudley isn’t either,’ said Harry, before realising what Tony was saying. His face lit up with a grin that spread across his face like wildfire. ‘You’re actually taking me away? I always - I mean -’ he seemed to stop himself, looking as if he had said to much. He looked up at Tony, the height difference making Harry seem all the more innocent and, well - cute. ‘Thank you,’ he breathed, eyes alight.

‘Are you sure?’ Tony asked, rather disconcerted that what he wanted to happen was actually happening for once. ‘I mean, like, do you want to bring anything? Like, uh, clothes? Are you sure you don’t want to stay?’

‘Nope!’ Harry said loudly, nearly interrupting Tony in his fervour. ‘I mean - definitely want to leave. Definitely.’ He nodded his head profusely. ‘I don’t want to bring anything either,’ he added hurriedly, eager to get out of the house with a grin on his face that could split it in half.

‘Er, okay,’ Tony said, not being able to stop himself grinning along with Harry.

They moved awkwardly towards the door, Tony following Harry’s much smaller footsteps out of the room. There stood the Dursley’s, a porky son huddled behind them with a thin layering of blonde hair placed atop of his head.

It was tangible how awkward the silence was, air slamming down upon them in a way that was unyieldingly awkward.

‘Bye,’ Harry finally said lamely, waving his hand through the thick air in the parody of a final wave. ‘I won’t be coming back. I’m going to America now.’

Dumbstruck, it seemed, the family nodded, gawping and glancing between Tony and his brother uncertainly. Tony felt a surge of pride for his brother at his frank farewell to his guardians of seven years.

Tony, as Harry moved to the door cheerily and opened it, offered a hand to nobody in particular. He was left waiting for a few seconds, before Vernon Dursley’s meaty hand enveloped his.

‘Nice doing business with you,’ Tony said with a shark-like grin, squeezing Mr. Dursley’s hand before relinquishing it, to ensure that he didn’t break his hand from Vernon trying the same thing. He didn’t spare a glance to Harry’s not-cousin, and only looked briefly at Petunia’s regretful but cold eyes before turning his back on them and striding towards the door, hardly believing that Harry had chosen to come with him after all.

Then again, seeing the state of the Dursley family, maybe he wasn’t so surprised at all.


	3. The Greasy Spoon And The Savoy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is very, very rich.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy this; I'm trying to increase the size of my chapters but they always seem to end naturally somewhere around the six pages mark. Oh well! I tried to put in some Americanisms considering that Tony is, well, American, and it's from his point of view - I've probably missed some, and there's most likely some kind of typo in there but I had my last exam today, please. Give me a break.  
> Enjoy!

‘So,’ Tony said, hands in his pockets as the door slammed shut behind him. Harry stood next to him, with a dreamy, shocked kind of expression on his face that seemed to show his sudden realisation of the situation.

‘You want to go to the cafe?’ Harry asked suddenly, staring up at Tony. Tony didn’t really have any better ideas - he had all the time in the world and nearly all of the money, too. He could go to Buckingham Palace for afternoon tea for all he cared, but it seemed, from the hopeful look on Harry’s face, that he had a certain fondness for this cafe.

‘Er, sure,’ Tony replied, shrugging. ‘Where is it?’

‘Just around the corner,’ Nodding, Harry looked over to the left of them. It seemed to be the direction of the end of the street, and so indicated some kind of civilisation outside of frills and fakery - which was by far good enough for Tony.

And so, they walked, in silence with the foreboding sense of being watched from the grunt-driver-man of Tony’s who seemed to insist on stalking him wherever he went. The brothers walked until Tony was really overly glad to see the singular, slightly dingy looking “Andy’s Full English”, complete with two shifty looking sweating, overweight men and one harassed looking couple with three crying children.

No - Tony didn’t think he’d be recognised here.

A tinkling of a muffled bell and the faint sounds of a football game were heard as Tony entered, looking around as Harry slipped past him and went up to order. Tony followed suit, mildly taken aback by the familiarity and confidence of his brother towards the waitress.

‘Course,’ the girl about the same age as Tony with the bleached blonde hair replied to Harry, grinning down at his dark head. ‘Won’t be a tick,’ she turned clicked a button on the kettle.

Selecting a seat, Tony chose one of the four seaters against the wall of the cafe, sitting facing the rest of the occupants out of a force of habit. Harry slid into a seat opposite him, resting his arms flat against the tabletop and leaning his head on his clasped hands.

‘Mel gives me free chips sometimes,’ he explained, as if that was everything Tony needed to know about “Andy’s”. Before Harry could say anymore, Tony’s driver sidled into the table next to them in a passive aggressive manner. Harry looked over to him and grinned.

‘You look happy,’ he said, surprisingly sarcastic. ‘I’m gonna call you that. Happy.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t, sir,’ “Happy” said stiffly, his voice gruff and uncomfortable. ‘My name is Harold Hogan —’

‘Nope,’ mind made up, Harry smiled serenely, sarcasm gone. ‘Your name is Happy.’

‘I don’t —’

‘Do you want anything to eat, Happy?’ Tony interrupted.

Happy looked at Tony, disgruntled, before giving it up as a lost cause and shaking his head.

Shrugging, Tony looked back to his brother. Harry’s head was resting on his left hand, staring absently at something unseen to Tony’s eyes. It was at that moment, strangely prompt, that their meals arrived — greasy and fried and delicious looking through the eyes of someone who was jet-lagged, tired, and oh so starving. He was in no position to turn his nose up at any kind of food, regardless of its condition. The waitress smiled warmly at Harry and appreciatively at Tony.

‘Hope you like fry-ups,’ Harry said, already digging into the tinned tomato on his plate.

‘Please, I’d be eating my own arm if it weren’t for this,’ Tony replied, grabbing the cutlery eagerly and glancing over the bulging pile to determine what to eat first. Harry gave him a red-stained grin, to which Tony replied in kind with an equally egg filled one.

It was only when Tony had slowed down a little bit, having decided that he refused to choke to death and die hungry, that he spoke again, cutting the fat off of his bacon which was an action mirrored, unconsciously, by Harry.

‘So,’ he said hesitantly, sawing away at the meat, ‘I don’t know if anybody told you, but you’re kind of adopted,’

Harry looked thoughtfully up to the ceiling as he chewed on something fatty. ‘Yeah, I kind of guessed by now.’ He looked at Tony appraisingly, which made him feel like he was taking a test without a moment’s revision (which, if he was honest with himself, was not a new concept to him). ‘How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’ Tony replied quickly, stuffing the yolk of an egg in his mouth, abandoning the bacon. Harry’s forehead wrinkled.

‘Are you sure you want to take me? I mean, I’m like a kid and everything and you’re not that much older than me —’

‘Just, you know, a decade —’

‘I don’t know, like, two visits a year would be fine, and maybe some kind of awesome birthday present —’

‘Why would I have forked out the money to fly out here if I weren’t going to do this properly?’

Harry blinked at Tony, and then smiled knowingly. ‘You’re rich,’

‘What?’ Tony said, confused. ‘How did you —’

‘You have a chauffeur.’

Happy interrupted awkwardly, arm raised slightly. ‘I’m more of a driver, I mean, I don’t have the hat —’

‘Could have been hired. I might not know my way. He could be a kindly stranger helping out a weary traveller —’

‘He called you “Sir”.’

Crossing his arms, Tony huffed and leaned back. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘I’m rich. Loaded. And guess what, smart-ass, you’re my brother so you’re getting half of it too.’

Harry looked contemplative, an expression nothing close to the wondrous joy Tony had anticipated of him when he was told he would receive millions.

‘How do you know I’m not part of a plot. You know — to steal all your money. Kill you off. Whatever.’

‘Doesn’t sound like a very good plot if you don’t even know what it is,’ Tony replied, smirking at the put out expression on Harry’s face. He chewed on some black pudding absently. There was a long pause. Tony looked over the cafe again, and the grubby tiles that looked like they had been scrubbed thousands of times stared back at him. One of the men — who was a builder, now Tony looked properly — got up to pay.

‘So … do you, um,’ Tony looked back to Harry, ‘know why I’m adopted?’ Harry looked smaller and meeker than Tony had seen him over the short amount of time he had known him.

‘No,’ Tony replied softly, feeling guilty that he wasn’t able to provide more information. ‘And I’m really sorry that I even had to come and get you, you know? Not that I don’t want you as my brother —’ he hurriedly added when Harry began to look upset, wishing he were as smooth with words here as he was on the red carpet, ‘but I wish you could’ve lived with Lily and James. They were good people.’

Tony had, obviously, never met Lily and James Potter. He was drawing on the fact that they were smiling in the picture and that they had adopted a child, which was what he considered to be a charitable act even if they couldn’t have children of their own. Besides — Harry looked like he needed some kind of support.

‘Me too.’ Harry said quietly, and Tony knew it wasn’t a slight against himself, but a thoughtful regret for something that was entirely not Harry’s fault.

 

*

 

Hotels in London, from Tony’s experience, were glittering structures of history and old money. Logically, he knew that they weren’t all like that — every country had its crumbling motels and damp-infested shower curtains, but he couldn’t help but be happy in the fact that he was one of the lucky few who could live in the Savoy or the Ritz for a year in a whim without it making him bankrupt.

Happy went off, trying to find somewhere safe to park the car whilst Harry and Tony found a place to sleep. With all of London open to them, a teenager and a child, it was hard not to have a competition to see who could buy the most ridiculously over-priced product in Harrods, or something of the like. Annoyingly sensibly, however, Tony found himself walking down the Strand with Harry, just past the shining lights of the theatre’s and small, bustling cafe’s despite the late hour.

Harry was asking a never-ending stream of questions that Tony could hardly answer, but he tried all the same.

‘What’s the most different thing between America and England?’ He asked, squirming his hand half-heartedly out of Tony’s as he tried to escape. Tony wouldn’t let him.

‘The accents,’ Tony said quickly, hoping to staunch the flow as he kept a look out for the elusive Savoy hotel.

‘Why do you say sidewalk? And mail? You’ll never guess what my teacher gets angry at the most —’

‘Oh look!’ Tony exclaimed, pointing, ‘the hotel!’

Harry stood, breathless, lights reflecting in his eyes as he stared up at the shining entrance, mouth slightly ajar. ‘The Savoy? We’re staying here? I thought it would be a Travelodge!’

Tony decided to file away his questions about Travelodge’s for later, and simply looked down at his brother with a grin. ‘We’re rich, remember?’ Harry nodded dumbly, still looking shell-shocked, and held on tightly to Tony’s hand as he walked briskly and single-mindedly to the door on the left.

Paying no attention to the doorman, who muttered a quick ‘Good evening Sir,’, Tony dragged Harry straight to the ornate desk in front of him, which he assumed was the reception desk. That was the thing about these kinds of hotels — they never seemed to have signs, clearly seeing them as gaudy.

‘Hi,’ he said charmingly, smiling as if he wasn’t holding a gawping eight year old’s hand and had long ago forgone his tie, ‘What rooms do you have available?’

The receptionist, who probably spoke about twelve different languages and was educated at Oxford, smiled calmly, showing no sign of being surprised at Tony’s appearance, or his brother’s. ‘We have a selection of the Superior, Deluxe, Luxury, Junior and Personality with a River View Suites all with varying degrees of availability. Unfortunately, the Royal and One Bedroom with a River View Suites are currently occupied.’

Tony blinked, and then looked down at his brother, who looked even more clueless than he must. ‘Um,’ Tony said, looking quickly around the room as if something there would provide him with an answer, ‘which of those has something for an eight year old?’

She tapped away on the keyboard for a moment, clicking with a speed that Tony had never before seen, even by his standards fuelled by caffeine and sleep deprivation. ‘We have three Personality Suites with a River View available with an adjoining Junior Suite. Would that be sufficient, Sir?’

‘Yeah, that’ll be fine, thank you,’ Tony replied, tugging Harry back to his side. ‘How much is that, for one night?’

‘Two thousand, six hundred and seventy-four pounds, Sir,’ she placed a card machine upon the counter, not even looking his way as he threw in the first card he found in his pocket and typed in his pin. ‘Would you like the Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill or Claude Monet Suite?’

Tony looked down at Harry, who’s jaw seemed to nearly be coming off once he had heard the price of one night stay. Tony thought for a moment, and supposed it was a lot — but, if all honesty, he was used to spending extortionate amounts of money in much more rushed situations than this.

‘Where do you want to stay, kid?’ He asked, as Harry looked up at him in awe.

Harry seemed to think for a moment, saying ‘Winston Churchill,’ before talking about how he had recently been learning about the politician in school. The receptionist smiled fondly, and placed a thick piece of paper on the divider between them.

‘If you would sign here, and here,’ she said, pointing with the golden, shining pen which she then offered to him. Name scrawled on a piece of paper as well as contact details, Tony glanced to his right and nearly exploded in shock at the portly man beside him holding a key and waiting serenely.

‘I hope you enjoy your stay here, Mr. Stark,’ the receptionist uttered finally, seconds before Tony and Harry were ushered into an elevator by the softly spoken butler-man. It was not compacted and stuffy as Tony had usually experienced elevators, but airy and well-lit with mirrors lined in gold which Tony didn’t doubt for a second was actual gold.

Harry’s face had resumed it’s previous disposition; outright awe and astonishment and the grand splendour of his surroundings that he had clearly never experienced before in his life. Tony wished he could relate to his brother, but so it was that he had remained with his parents and lived a life filled with experiences and quality to the standard it was in the Savoy. Harry’s life, despite it’s youth, should have too.

The doors opened with hardly a sound, and the man in the suit gently manipulated Tony and Harry into the lush hallway and to a door just slightly on the left. He opened the oak door which was indeed labelled “Winston Churchill” on a golden plaque, placed the keys in a crystal bowl inside of the Suite, and stood to the side. Tony and Harry entered and the man bowed, muttering a farewell and offer of any future help, and left, closing the door gracefully behind him with the smallest of noises.

Tony was silent as he looked around at the grandeur of the room, with its gold lined everything and pillows that looked as if they were made out of something heavenly.

‘That was a nice lift,’ Harry finally said from behind him, and Tony barked out a laugh.

If Harry crawled into Tony’s bed in the middle of the night, letting moonlight shine through the doors that separated their rooms as he padded softly towards the King bed, neither mentioned it in the morning. Harry said he preferred tight spaces — that he was used to them, anyway. Tony was too exhausted to care.


	4. America

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, going back to college doesn't seem to give me much time. And, apparently, A2 year triples, not doubles in stress as I was anticipating, so if anybody could write my personal statement for me while I fill my daily quota of existential crises that would be great.   
> Seriously though, I really hope you enjoy this chapter. I know it's horrifically short, but at least you can't claim I move the plot along slowly! (I just take four apocalypses and twelve new universe conceptions to update. *sigh*)  
> I'll really try to make the next update longer. Really.
> 
> Spell x

The trip to the airport was without either delay or complication, and Tony remained eternally surprised that he had managed to not only smuggle himself but also an eight year old boy out of the country. He couldn’t blame the English border controls, though — he had a few handy contacts that owed Tony’s dad and therefore Tony and Stark Industries some favours, and given that it was an International company, the string pulling was nowhere near as troublesome as it probably should have been.

America seemed to fascinate Harry. Apparently, an entirely new country was enough to distract him from the life changing, monumental occurrences that were happening around him. While Harry scrolled through endless pages of research on a tablet Tony had given him with the warning of “break it and wait a month for the next one”, Tony searched and emailed child psychologists under pseudonyms and laughably easily faked identities.

One had emailed back with the only decent reply. Thank God they weren’t of the Freud variety, was all Tony could think as he read the email.

_Dear Mr. Polinski,_

_You appear to have caught me in a rather generous mood. I must make it clear, before I continue, that I do not make a habit of replying to random emails about ‘hypothetical’ situations to which I am certain are much less hypothetical than you would have me believe._

_Children are far more astute than the media and society as a whole would have you believe. On the other side of things, they also have many hidden depths that we, as apparently more intelligent in our age, don’t like to think they have. We like to keep our children as innocent as possible, for as long as possible._

_The child that you mentioned, hypothetically of course, sounds like he may be going through a kind of ‘Honeymoon Phase’. This happens regularly, especially immediately after life-changing events happen in a child’s life._

_Often, children will react brazenly after incidents such as this. However, more intelligent children tend to do the reverse; reacting much later than their less intelligent counter parts. Much like the build up of stress leading to illness, (see Rahe's naval experiment) the child may appear to be at complete ease and demonstrate an amazing amount of flexibility towards these or the aftermath of these events. After everything has settled, however, or maybe even not then, the child acts out in some way — a large span of tantrums for the smallest disagreements, in extreme cases even running away from home._

_This is common. This is nothing to be worried about. Please do not charge me for anything, my lawyer is already sick of overtime and he would not like to take time off from his holiday with his family._

_We might as well be married, considering how much time we spend arguing. Alas, it is not legal._

_Kind regards and best wishes,  
Daniel Huckman, child psychologist, USA_

Tony would watch Harry, then, and clue Rhodey in about it. They would make sure that he wouldn’t do anything harmful to himself or others, and they would be good with him. They would support him.

He knew Harry was one of the more intelligent kids that the psychologist mentioned. How could he not be, sharing the same gene pool as Tony? The assessment fit Harry perfectly, and apparently, it was only a matter of time before he cracked in someway or another.

Well. Tony would just have to take advantage of the current state of relaxation and compliancy. He was either too stupid or too clever to think about the future. Or too young.

‘What you looking at?’ Tony asked, setting down his own tablet a Harry somehow managed to drag his gaze away from his own.

‘America,’ Harry replied with relish, looking alive with new information. Tony was sure that was what the faces of the first settlers in America looked like, before they realised the little problem of people already living there.

‘I can take you to see Plymouth Rock sometime,’ Tony offered, watching the smile break across his brother’s face, not having the heart to tell him that it probably wouldn’t be for a while yet because Tony was internationally recognised and having an eight year old with him while visiting a popular historical landmark wasn’t the best way to go about keeping everyone else in the dark about Harry’s existence.

‘Are we there yet?’ Harry asked eagerly, fidgeting already even though they were only two hours into their journey.

‘Um, no,’ Tony replied, unknowing of the emotional turmoil that phrase would cause him in the coming hours.

 

*

 

Smuggling Harry out of the airport was the hardest aspect of the journey. Somehow, word had gotten out about the imminent arrival of Tony Stark’s plane, and long story short, Harry had a brief adventure impersonating a suitcase because Tony was too exhausted from keeping an eight year old entertained when he had a hard time entertaining himself to think of anything better.

Glad that Happy was reliable and able to drive Tony and Harry home with an amazing show of traffic manoeuvrability, Tony hustled the suitcase-boy into the boot before rescuing him five minutes later from possible suffocation and imminent boredom.

‘That was stuffy,’ was all Harry said about the matter, before his attention was diverted to the screen divider and the way it worked.

Inevitably, the screen divider between the driver and the being-driven was no longer in operation by the time the car rolled into the driveway of the childhood home that Tony was desperate to move out of but couldn’t be bothered to look for other houses. It was tall and imposing, a 1920s style mansion with stained glass windows and heavy wooden doors that were incredibly impractical. Gates of iron, too, thankfully lacking in some kind of Hollywood-esque initials on them, a rare show of the little taste that Tony’s mother had had. But, that could just be his opinion.

Tony had never been fond of “feature houses”. They had too much character and too many memories; he considered himself a futurist and in that respect, memories were meant to be trodden over and bricked away. Nostalgia just wasn’t in his vocabulary.

Harry’s face, meanwhile, was gobsmacked. He stared up at the building in something like shock, and it struck Tony that it was pretty likely that he had never seen something like it. Despite the fact that the building was more likely to bring Tony revulsion than love, he could see why it was almost breath-taking at a first look. That had been lost in the years of growing up there, something that Harry had bitterly missed out on.

Maybe, it struck Tony, Harry was better off not growing up with him. He would have almost certainly been treated the same as Tony, though perhaps even more so. Howard Stark had the medieval view that the first son was the only important one — a fact proved by Harry’s adoption. Maybe Harry was better off with the Dursleys? Tony didn’t know enough about those people, but they were decidedly more normal than the Starks. The treatment he had seen Harry receive certainly wasn’t too different to his own at that age, anyway. Not that he thought it was.

‘You lived here?’ Harry said in a quiet voice, still looking as if he couldn’t bear to tear his eyes away from the stony building. Tony grabbed his shoulder and steered him towards the front doors, making an agreeing noise.

‘Still do, until I can find somewhere better for us,’ Tony replied, while Harry glanced up at him and smiled.

‘This is so cool. So cool.’

Tony ginned at the look on his brother’s face as he unlocked the doors to the mansion and let them both inside, Happy trailing uncertainly behind them.

*

There was one thing that Tony had not factored into his plans. Smuggling a child through airport security? Done. Gaining guardianship of a child without it hitting the tabloids? Fine.

Remembering to tell the guy who was his own legal guardian up until a couple of months ago? Apparently, that was something that Tony’s brain just couldn’t handle.

Obie was at the door, and after shouting through the bathroom door to Harry who was currently in the shower — he hoped eight year olds could cope by themselves, he didn’t think he could deal with Harry drowning after everything — to stay in there until he said otherwise, Tony hurried down the stairs, muffled shouts following him all the way down.

‘Obie,’ Tony exclaimed joyously, hoping the man wouldn’t yet know about his recent excursion. ‘Nice of you to drop by!’

Obie stared at Tony, making him want to dissolve right into the ground. It felt like the man could see into his very heart and was finding out every little secret he had ever kept. It was unfailingly uncomfortable and unnerving.

‘I know you’ve just flown back from England,’ Obie frowned, standing up as he spoke, glittering glass of whiskey that Tony hadn’t noticed before in one hand. ‘What I don’t know is why. Another one of those parties, Tony? Definitely not a business trip.’

Stumbling over his words like a fourteen year old asking a girl out on a date, Tony couldn’t decide on the best way to explain to Obie that he had a brother and he was now just in the other room. God forbid Harry actually wandered into this conversation. The thought alone made Tony want to crumble.

‘It’s, um, hard to explain. I might have found some of mum and dad’s… stuff,’

‘Stuff?’

‘Papers. Will stuff. I was sorting through it and there was baby things. You know. Birth certificates. Things like that. Baby stuff.’

In the back of Tony’s mind, he had wandered whether Obie knew about Harry. The man had always been around, so it wasn’t completely irrational and implausible as it might seem on the face of it. Or, maybe it was that Tony hoped Obie knew about Harry already. It would certainly make for a much less awkward and stumbling conversation if he did already have an inkling about Tony’s parents and birth certificates having a significant connection.

As if all of Tony’s prayers were answered, the glimmering twinkle of sudden realisation bloomed in Obie’s eyes. He seemed to search Tony’s face, looking for something that Tony was unknowing of.

‘You found the certificate.’ Obie stated, no question in it, simply a laying out of facts. He knew about the pregnancy and the adoption then, and though it appeased much of Tony’s short-term worrying, it enhanced the long-term. Why had he not told Tony? Why had he not seemed Harry out before?

‘Yeah,’ Tony replied, voice sounding feeble. ‘And I found him, too.’

‘That’s why you went to England?’ Obie was taking increasingly large amounts of whiskey into his large mouth, looking harried and worn all of a sudden. Tony felt bad for inflicting that upon the man.

Tony made a non-committed sound in agreement. He scratched his left forearm. ‘He’s here.’ Obie didn’t react.

‘Would you like to meet him?’ Tony tried again, but he did not garner any reaction from hid former caregiver.

Obie stared distantly towards a doorway that was surrounded by old books and chipped wood. His whiskey was gone, most of the small anyway glass being consumed in the last few minutes.

‘No. I have a meeting.’

Even striding out of the room, the look on Obie’s face was unmissable. He looked worried and apprehensive, shocking to see on the face of a cultured and assured businessman that he usually was. Obie was solid and strong, he did not waver from his judgment easily and the apprehension struck severe concern into Tony. He could not even fathom a possible cause for the worry; shock and maybe even joy, perhaps, but not the face that Obie was wearing at that moment.

Tony followed Obie out of the living room and into the hallway, hoping to stop his from leaving. But his large hand was already on the door handle. Pausing before he crossed the threshold that would take him out of the house, Obie looked back, a sorrowful look on his face, as if he had just been to a funeral.

‘Tony, this might be one mistake you can’t undo.’ Tony started to protest, but Obie shot him down with a simple, sharp look. ‘I told your parents not to do it. But they insisted, and over the years, I’ve come to believe they’re right.’ Obie stared through the frosted glass of the front door. ‘Ignorance is bliss, isn’t that the saying? I would have been interested to see what you would have been like without the spotlight.’

The door closed and Tony was dumbstruck. Upstairs, the bathroom door opened and closed, Harry shouting down something that Tony simply didn’t, or couldn’t, process.

Why did what Obie say sound like a threat?

Tony would find out in ten years.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, and first of all, I hope my first, meek little footstep into posting on this site was enjoyable for you. I'm really nervous about posting here! But I hope it's all right, anyway.  
> I have no intention of following the comic books to the exact T. Not because I don't want to, but because I know that I just don't have the knowledge or the resources to do so. So, I'm sort of going off on my own, trying to follow MCU. Luckily, I know a lot about Harry Potter, so when that time comes I'll be breathing a bit of a sigh of relief. That being said, things will obviously be changing around a bit considering, well... that Harry and Tony are brothers. I'd say that would change things a bit, wouldn't you?  
> So, yeah. Please be prepared for some snippets of 'What is she going on about, Tony's not half Italian!'.  
> Thank you, and I hope you enjoy what's going to happen in this story! *gulps nervously*


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